


Skies Cloud on the Horizon

by airiat



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Family Drama, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19321336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airiat/pseuds/airiat
Summary: High Queen of Skyrim Fjoara Ebonhand, her husband Teldryn Sero, and their infant daughter become snowed-in by a deadly storm on the eve of Saturalia. Resources dwindle and the storm shows no sign of stopping. Will they make it through the night to see their daughter’s first holiday?





	Skies Cloud on the Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from [this post](https://prompt-bank.tumblr.com/post/143272225898/drabble-challenge-1-150) originally posted on [my tumblr.](https://airiat.tumblr.com/post/185775836034/skies-cloud-on-the-horizon-prompt-no-22-requested)
> 
> not necessarily canon to my fic featuring the same characters!
> 
> warnings: themes of death/implied suicide attempt

Beyond the stone walls of our home, the snow beat ceaselessly against the starless night sky. Amidst the bedlam, the wind shrieked through bare tree branches that rattled like old bones at the bottom of a crypt. It was the third night of this storm and the second of its kind that brutal winter. Safe inside the unyielding and self-sustaining fortress of the Blue Palace, I ordinarily would have paid little heed to this sort of weather. That time, however, my husband, myself, and our infant daughter found ourselves three holds away from Solitude at our manor on Lake Ilinalta, unprepared and helpless. 

It was to be a short trip, so our food stores were scarce--enough to last little more than a week. In order to replenish them, it would be a two day’s journey on horseback to Falkreath. Though I could use my  _ thu’um _ to clear the storm, my power was limited, the effect transient and only able to influence a small area. Thus, I was the only one capable of making the journey. At any other time in my life, I would have made the sacrifice readily, but my daughter was far too young for me to be away from her. And for anyone other than me, to venture outside would be to walk into the arms of death. We were hostages to the storm.

I almost couldn’t bear to think of how dire our situation was, but with my daughter’s life to consider, I had no other choice. I tried to be pragmatic, tried to reason away my fear, but the storm gave me limitless time to spin tales of disaster in my mind. I saw images of my family dying, ravaged by starvation or laid to waste by the freezing weather, our home our burial ground. It was my own tendency towards anxiety amplified by the brutal awareness of motherhood. I thought I knew the shape fear takes, the sawtooth armor on a  _ dovah _ or the sea of eyes on a Daedric prince, but those monsters became lambs in the face of that day.

The thoughts that tormented my mind also rendered me paralyzed; I hadn’t left my position seated in front of the hearth since the morning. In my arms, Rayna was a small bundle, so helpless in the way her eyes were closed shut against the world of chaos she was born into, misfortune poised to unfold with every stroke of time that passes. It was Saturalia’s Eve that night, our whole reason for being there. My husband and I had wanted to spend her first holiday away from the decorum of the palace, safe and in repose at our private residence. It was an occasion that should have been one of merriment, not of white-knuckled survival. Every time I recall that night I do so with the suffocation of regret pressed against my throat like a dagger.

We should have known. 

We should have heeded my mother’s prophecies of a holiday gone awry. I should have listened to the way my bones grow cold as they do when there is snow over the horizon. But we were selfish, so exhausted by the duties of my new life as Skyrim’s queen. It’s only a few day’s time, we said. As if catastrophe was an event one could schedule on a calendar. Kyne heeds no mortal man.

“Fjoara,” Teldryn said from behind us. “Come up to bed with me. Please.”

Anger gripped me in its fiery fists at his words. “How dare you even  _ think _ of sleep at a time like this,” I growled in a low voice.

Teldryn’s footsteps creaked against the wooden floor as he walked to us. My husband looked at me with desperation overflowing from his eyes as he knelt at my feet. “Please, Fjoara. If I take her instead, will you go rest?”

“No,” I responded. “I will not be apart from my daughter.”

His desperation morphed into hurt when I spoke. “Rayna...” he paused to take a deep breath “...Rayna is my daughter, too. Let me take her.”

“No” is all I said.

Teldryn stood abruptly and I could see that the pain had made its final transformation into rage. He faced my daughter and me, flame smoldering in one clenched fist. I regarded the threat he posed with a dismissive glance. My dear husband seemed to have forgotten the way I could make him crumple to the ground at the utterance of a single word.

“I don’t know why I married you.”

At that, all of my resentment fell away as I stared at him in anguished horror. Teldryn might have needed a sentence rather than a word, but the wound was just as devastating as anything I could have done to him.

He was seething, then. “I don’t belong in Skyrim. There’s nothing for me here, but I stayed anyway. And why? For  _ you _ , Fjoara. Because I was a brainless, lovestruck s’wit.”

For as much faith I had in my Voice, I found myself entirely unable to speak. I could only watch as the fire grew in his hand; I could smell its heat.

He continued. “If I hadn’t married you, I could have gone back home to Morrowind, far away from the atrocities of _ your _ homeland. Instead, I sit here waiting to see if this godsforsaken  _ snow _ , of all things, is going to take away the only two people I’ve ever loved. Well, to that I say, ‘not if it takes me first.’”

I could scarcely make sense of his words--the sudden ringing in my ears was too deafening. Teldryn looked at us for a moment longer before he strode away out of my view. 

Somehow, throughout this, Rayna had stayed peacefully asleep. I tried to comfort myself in her small, warm presence, so solid and anchoring against my body. It was almost enough to heal the hole in my heart Teldryn had just left. Suddenly, the sound of the front door slamming shut cut through the fogginess of my mind like the bright illumination from a torch. In the next moment, I heard the fast pounding of boots on wood as someone came running towards me.

“My Lady,” the steward said with panic clear in his voice. “Your husband has gone out into the storm. I tried to stop him, but he…” Heidmir’s fingers hovered lightly over a scorched handprint wrapped around the skin of his forearm.

“Teldryn?” I whispered. “He...no.  _ No _ .”

I was on my feet in an instant, my sudden movement jostling Rayna as her sterling cry rang out above the fray. I drew Healing into one of my hands and laid it on Heidmir’s injury. When his burn had vanished, I placed Rayna, still wailing, into his arms. With my absence, her cries grew shrill and piercing. I could feel my mother’s instinct drawing me back to her, but I forced myself onward to the front door. By the time I reached the entryway, my housecarl and two guards were already there anticipating my command.

“Your Highness, let us go out to find him,” Svari said to me. “To lose our lives would be no true loss like yours would be.”

“And lose your lives you will,” I told her brusquely. “I’m in no danger. Please, bring my cloak and boots... _ quickly _ .”

Svari said nothing more, knowing better than to attempt further dissuasion, and hastened to the closet in the entryway. Upon her return, she set my boots down and settled my thickest fur cloak around my shoulders. In one fluid movement, I stepped into my boots and started towards the door, prying it open in a fight against the howling wind. The violently churning snow formed an almost immovable wall at the threshold of the doorway. Though it was no worthy opponent to me, I was astounded by the sheer effort Teldryn must have made to step outside. Yet, while he had the strength to leave, he would not have the strength to survive for very long. Time was dwindling with terrifying urgency.

“ _ Lok vah koor _ ,” I Shouted, my Voice nearly swept away by the wildness of the wind. 

Within seconds, the storm cowered away from me, forming my path forward like white carpet at my feet. I walked, thinking that he would be mere steps away, but he was nowhere to be found. How far could he have possibly made it?

“ _ Teldryn _ !” I screamed, so loudly that Kyne herself could have heard the echoes.

There was nothing in response but the sound of the wind slowly sidling back up around me, snarling a hushed threat at my back. I quickened my pace, Shouting to clear the skies once again. The dusk’s light was growing dimmer, snuffed out even further by the storm on all sides of me, but I was in a mindset of pure survival. No errant thought of fear could slip past the stronghold of my mind. My vision tunneled so that I would not see anything but the clarity that protected my journey. To fear would be to allow for Teldryn’s death, for my death.

When I finally found him, he was a still body that had succumbed to the storm, but I did not let myself believe that he was gone. No. My husband would never leave me so easily, not after all those many times he waited for me while I fought my battles, not knowing if I would come back. If I didn’t leave him then, he would not leave me now. That was not how it would end. Overcome with the ferocity of this conviction, I called upon my Dragon Aspect and lifted him into my arms. 

The storm was a rabid animal thrashing at my heels by the time I had made it back into the house. I stepped through the door and fell to my knees in a flurry of snow, cradling him in my arms. The mightful energy of my  _ thu’um _ had begun to wear off, but I did not allow myself to weep for him. He was still alive. I could feel the faint hum of it within him. Drawing upon my last vapors of strength, I pulled Healing into my hands as I held him against me. I let my lungs breathe for him, let my heart beat for him. I would have given him the whole of my life’s force if that’s what it took.

After an indiscernible length of time, Teldryn finally let out a soft sigh against my chest. I willed his eyes to open--I wanted nothing more than to see their brilliant red--but they never did. Still, I knew that the worst had come to pass. He would recover. It was not time for him to join his ancestors just yet.

Too weak from the immensity of my efforts, I allowed the guards to carry him up to our bedroom. I trailed closely behind, watching with a wary eye. They laid him on the bed and I helped rid him of his wet clothes. Only once he was settled, covered in every blanket we had, I finally stopped to take care of myself. When I had changed into a dry nightgown, I pulled back the covers and got into bed, curling myself protectively around his body. He sighed again when I laid my head on his chest.

“Heidmir, where is--” I started to call, but he was through the door with Rayna before I was able to finish. He settled her into my arms then left with the graciousness of his silence in this difficult moment.

As if she somehow knew of the trauma her father had just been through, she reached her small hands out towards him. Carefully, slowly for both of their sakes, I repositioned myself so that she could lay on his chest, supported by me at her back. As if by some small miracle from the Divines, Teldryn’s eyes opened at the exact moment her body touched his. There was frantic, but brief confusion in them before his gaze finally settled on her, then me. 

Teldryn brought his arms up to hold Rayna himself, overcome with his relief. “I’m so sorry, Fjoara,” he whispered when his eyes found mine.

“That was the most foolish thing you have ever done,” I said simply.

“I know,” he answered, taking in a deep breath.

“If we lost you, I don’t know…” I squeezed my eyes closed, unable to continue. The tears I’d been staving off had at last begun to fall.

“You will  _ never _ lose me. I will never leave my child without her father and you…”

He grew quiet, so I opened my eyes to be met by him looking at me with a love that almost seemed worthy enough to be written into history. “And you, Fjoara, are a blessing sent straight to me from my ancestors. I will not leave your side for as long as you would have me there.”

Our reconciliation was short, but it was sweeter than the snowberries that stood red and lovely against the winter’s white bleakness. I still struggle to understand what Teldryn must have been feeling to admit defeat in such a way. How destitute he must have been. My husband has always been predisposed to sadness, but I never suspected his life was endangered by it. Every time I think of that moment, I take his pain into me, and it leaves me scarcely able to breathe. I cannot even begin to imagine how much worse it was for him.

By the time the sun had dipped completely beneath the earth, my small family and I had drifted off, safe and together. The trials we had faced that day seemed so far removed as peace settled around us for that night. Sometime in the midst of our slumber, the storm retreated back into the heavens where it came from, leaving only a quiet stillness in its place. When we awoke the next morning, all of yesterday’s sadness had been absolved.

Though she won’t remember what we went through to get there, my daughter’s first Saturalia ended up a happy one, indeed. I’ve never placed much faith into the Divines, but I do believe that they smiled upon us that day.


End file.
